Stryke While The Iron is Hot
by Mina Stryke
Summary: Two hunter sisters from the Southeast seek justice for the murder of the fiance of the eldest sister. But just down what dark roads will this path for vengeance lead them? No one knows.


I may not be what most people think of when they hear the word "heroine" (like a hero, but a girl, not the drug, asshat), but it's what I like to think of myself as. At least, it's what I am in this story, so you'll just have to live with it.

I'm five feet tall, a little on the chunky side weighing in at 151 pounds (I lost 6 pounds recently, thank you very much), with REALLY long hair that reaches almost to the bottom of my back and is the blondish-brown color of mud of the variety of a light brown, chalky/dusty color, or dishwater. Gideon called it "dirty gold" because he said when the sun struck it, it shined a golden color that overpowered the brown in it. He was always romantical. It's wavy-curly, if that counts for anything, or it's wavy-curly whenever I wash it I should say. I keep it pulled back when I sleep and that yanks the wave-curls right out of it, unfortunately, as does brushing it. I've taken to wearing it half-up, half-down, with the front part pulled back and clipped up in the middle of the back of my head. It's becoming my signature style. It's heavily layered and parted in the center, and frames my face quite nicely.

My stature is small, if you couldn't tell by the whole "five feet tall" thing, and as such, so are some of my feminine...attributes… I'm barely an A-cup. My sister was the one gifted with all of those assets, alas. My ass ain't too bad, but it's nothing to necessarily brag about either.

I'm pale as a ghost, ha, and I burn easily in the sun, double ha. You'll get the "ha's" in a bit, I promise.

My best physical quality is my eyes. They are a stormy blue-grey with a gold ring around the pupil. I have long, thick lashes that frame said beauties, though due to medications, I do weird things like squint both eyes or close one eye more than the other and scrunch them up, and that detracts from noticing their brilliance. Also, wearing glasses takes away from them as well. I have contacts, they've just been giving me trouble lately so I've resorted to the old standby of my frames. Though I'm sure I'll be back to contacts soon enough. You'll see why.

Now let's get a little bit personal...a little bit...intimate...but not in the sexual way you skeevy creep.

I'm bipolar. On top of that, I have fibromyalgia. And with fibro comes a WHOLE host of other ailments that are too many to list. I'm also an empath, but that's not a disease, or at least I don't consider it one...at times… I don't know whether being bipolar made me an empath or being an empath is just enhanced by the bipolar, but all I know is that I can remember having/being both since I was a real young kid. The fibro as well. But it's like the perfect storm combination that turned me into what I am today: a psychic.

I use the term loosely. By psychic, I mean I can use my empathic abilities to feel the emotions of those around me, even things that aren't human...or alive. And sometimes, just sometimes, I can even get a whiff of what is causing that person or thing to feel the emotions they are feeling. It's something I'm working on developing and growing. I can also sense when there's something or someone nearby due to their strong emotions, even if they can't be seen. I can be possessed and HAVE been possessed by spirits, and they only possess my emotions and sometimes my perception of who I am, though usually only for short times and most of those times happened when I was a teen at my lowest point of depression, which is why I wear a cuff that fits snugly against my left wrist made of iron, ingrained with rock salt. You see, my powers are strongest when I'm at my most vulnerable, my most defenseless. I'm also learning and developing my powers to be more useful when I'm not a sobbing mess on the floor, broken into a million little pieces because my mind and spirit have shattered over some bipolar bullshit or some crap life has thrown at me and made my bipolar turn it into bipolar bullshit.

And that's what makes me a valuable asset in hunting, and by hunting, I don't mean the kind you do in an orange vest in a deer stand in the woods. No, I'm talking about tracking and killing monsters and demons and all sorts of unimaginable creatures and beings you couldn't even possibly begin to comprehend.

I'm like the cleric of the group, I stand back and do my part with my powers and let the others handle the gory gruesome fighting stuff. I AM allowed the use of long range weapons, but due to my shakiness from fibro, my aim isn't always up to par, though it's usually nearly damn near perfect. That's something I'm also trying to get better at. I mainly use the crossbow, because guns are a little scary for me. Not a fan of the loud sounds they make. My crossbow is steel, black, and elegant. I like it a lot. I have iron, steel, and silver "arrows" for it. For close combat, I use Chinese butterfly swords inscribed with all manner of black symbols and sigils. I wear them on my back in a single scabbard.

Maybe I watched a little too much anime as a kid/teen/young adult…

I'm actually pretty damn good with the crossbow. I studied with an instructor for a year, as well as studied with an MMA fighter for a year (as did my sister, but we'll get to her), and also studied with a master of weapons for the butterfly swords for a year (my sis studied with him too, but for other weapons). We took a year (we being my sister and I) to prepare ourselves. We also learned intermediate first aid from one of the members of the coven of witches, who were also hunters who took us in and trained us in the art of hunting, who was a nurse by day.

I also have a knife, silver pommelled wire wrapped hilt with stainless steel cross-guard and Arkansas-style bowie blade made of surgical stainless steel, and a dagger that looks more medieval but kinda matches that knife, brass pommelled with wire wrapped hilt and brass circles going up the hilt with some decorative markings on it and brass cross-guard with a poniard dagger blade in a black shark skin sheath with brass trappings at the top and bottom, and all the other trappings a hunter needs to trap evil. The silver hilt of the knife comes in handy sometimes. And speaking of silver, I wear a very long finely braided chain of silver around my right wrist that magnetizes together at the ends and covers about 4 inches of my skin, and it's a weapon, but it's also concealment for the anti-possession tattoo I have inked on my wrist. I'll talk more about it later.

Speaking of silver, I also wear a paw print pendant along with another pendant that says Gideon's name (we'll get to him) and a vial with his Grace inside of it, since it was separated from him when he fell. That'll also be explained later. It shimmers and shines and makes me feel like a part of him is still with me, because literally, it is. It gives me strength and hope and courage. I wear my engagement ring still and on my right hand I wear my wedding band. One of the members of the coven also made me Angel/Hunter earrings, which consist of a pentacle surrounded by a circle as a the base, with a small dagger charm hanging from the middle of the bottom of each one and on either side of the dagger are angel wing charms. I use rubber stoppers to keep them in for when we get into scuffles or I have to move quickly.

Oh, I also possess the power to heal minor wounds by laying hands, ha, on someone and absorbing their wound into myself, basically meaning I then get that wound transferred to my body, but it keeps the key players in the fray and what's a little more pain on top of the pain I already experience both mentally and physically from my conditions, eh? *shrugs* I'm also attempting to develop this power to learn to take on more serious wounds, even at detriment to myself, for the good of the team. Let's just say it's not the most fun thing ever in the history of mankind. It actually kinda sucks ass, but I do what I can to help out because while I'm decent in a fight and good with a crossbow and butterfly swords, I'm no where near regular hunter standards. Do it for the team!

And by team, I mean my sister and I. Yep, that's right. It's just the two of us, hunting together, doing what we can to rid the world of evil and filth. I mean, if we don't do it, who else will?

I'm the eldest, Mina, and my little sister is Janette. I go by Mini (or just plain Mina) and I call her Jan. And those aren't our real names. Practically no one's names in this book are their real ones. It's to protect them, from the evil that hunts us like we hunt it. Only those brave enough to go by their real names are called their real names in this book. Or those who are no longer with us. Like Gideon (except his last name). But that's for a future paragraph or so. Stryke is the last name we chose to use, because we strike whenever we can. Or so we like to think.

My sister, she's a few inches taller than me, more built, as I mentioned VERY well-endowed in the chest area, not so much in the butt area, and a little on the heavier side like me, though she doesn't look it like I do. I think she carries most of her weight in her breasts, honestly. Haha. Her hair is about the same length as mine, but 3 to 4 inches shorter, and is only slightly lighter in color. No waves, just straight, unless she braids it while wet to give it waves. She usually wears her hair down wavy from being braided or in a braid to keep it out of the way. She's the fighter. Her weapon of choice is a katana etched with black symbols and sigils and guns, with etched bullets and just plain old regular bullets. She's also got an array of daggers and knives, symboled and sigiled up, and, like I said, all the other common tools of the trade for a hunter. Her eyes are also slightly lighter than mine, and no gold ring. Maybe that's a trademark of the "gifts" I was so "fortunately" "blessed" with…

My powers are both a blessing and curse… It sucks to know how everyone is feeling all the time, especially when you're in a place mentally where you can't control your "gift", and especially when you're feeling the emotions of the people closest to you and they aren't very nice feelings they're feeling, especially in regards to you. And my powers come with a price. They drain me when I use them, and I have to rest, sometimes for only a few minutes, sometimes for upwards of a month, depending on how indepth I went and how powerful the usage was. I can even go into a coma if I overextend myself with my powers too much.

But back to my sister and I. I'm 26, she's 24. We're fairly (brand) new to this hunting business, to be honest. I don't like to talk about why we got into it, but for the sake of the story I will. My fiance, my highschool sweetheart, my lover of 10 years, was killed by something "supernatural", and it became my mission to seek out whatever evil took him from me and destroy it. My sister joined me, knowing I couldn't do it alone, at least not physically. We're just starting out on our quest to find Gideon's slayer(s). Honestly, we haven't even come up against anything supernatural yet. And that's why I'm sure I'm going to go back to contacts or beg Daddy for Lasik (though Jan would need to do the same) when we DO actually have to fight something (Jan wears contacts), because I'm sure wearing glasses in a skirmish is not the most practical or intelligent thing to do. But regardless, back to the story at hand.

Gideon wasn't what he appeared to be either. He was born a human with the soul of an angel (Gideon being his angelic name and his human name will be left out for now, but we'll call him Gideon Reistel), cast out and separated from his angelic Grace, to live as a human, from birth to death. Though his death was much too soon. When he regained his memories of being an angel later in his young adult life, we ventured together to find his Grace, but not to restore it, only to keep it safe, and we bottled it up and he gave it to me as a sign of his complete love and trust in me to keep safe. That's why I wear it. But someone or something discovered what he was and took it upon themselves to see him dead. Maybe they were looking for the Grace and killed him when they discovered he didn't have it. I don't know. He was the one who taught me about my powers and showed me how to use and strengthen them. He no longer possessed his angelic powers, so he felt if he could help me to use mine to do some good in this world, then he was still fulfilling that angelic purpose he felt inside of himself still: to help humanity. He taught me about the "supernatural" world, not to become a hunter, but to become a helper.

Gideon was my life. A part of me died when he did. But like the phoenix, something was born from the ashes my life became after losing him. A purpose. A drive. A passion.

And thus: hunting. I know it's not what Gideon would have wanted, but I will have my revenge.

I may have misled you a little in the beginning… I'm no heroine. I'm not courageous or brave or any of that shit. I'm just a girl who's rage and hunger for vengeance outweighs her absolute and utter terror and fear of the ghoulies and monsters I face, but I shamefully admit it only outweighs it by a little. To be honest, I'm scared shitless half the time we hunt and get into fights with the things that go bump in the night (or with the idea of it since we haven't done it yet), but I do it because my love for Gideon is that important. I can't let his killer get away and sit by and do nothing. I have to avenge him. Even if it means dying myself.

My sister does it more for the thrill, the excitement, and the bloodlust, but not for vengeance purposes like me. Oh sure, Gideon was her brother-in-law to be and had been involved in her life for the same 10 years he was in mine, but they weren't close and were actually slightly hostile towards each other. She agreed to help me once she discovered my plan because she wanted to spice things up in her life. Le sigh. So needless to say, she can be a bit reckless and careless at times when those two things are not so good to be.

Our hunting territory is the Southeast, with our base of operations being a town in South Carolina which will go unnamed for protection purposes. When Gideon died, we made sure everyone close to us knew it wasn't some random normal murder, and we prepared them to defend themselves if they were ever attacked or anything came after them or their families while we departed on our mission. Except my father. He doesn't know what we do. And it's best it stays that way.

He's a holy roller who wouldn't understand our mission or what we do and would think we were agents of the devil. So we just let him think we're on a "road trip" doing some "sisterly bonding" to help me "heal after Gideon's death". He sends us money to help cover expenses like hotels and meals and gas. He did gift us flashlights, pretty badass ones, in case we decided to go "camping". They're by a company called Underwater Kinetics who make lights for scuba diving and our models are the C4 eLED in black that are rechargeable. They're waterproof, can be taken to deep depths underwater, and are even shock resistant. And they're hella bright too. Makes canvassing areas a million times easier. Thanks Dad for unwittingly helping our cause. Oh, they also retail at about $150 apiece. We upgraded to the NiCad battery to make them rechargeable. That was another $86. My father did always try to show his love with money.

My car that we're taking on our "trip", my father is paying for also, because it was a joint purchase between Gideon and I and he was mostly making the payments on it when he died and I can't afford to make the payments by myself right now. ESPECIALLY not RIGHT NOW. It's a 2010 Toyota Corolla S with a moon roof (makes for better shooting while driving) and a not-gaudy spoiler on the rear. She's a dark grey color, and I like to call her Mist, though Jan insists on calling her Smoke. She's enchanted, as in, there was an enchantment put on her so that in fog or mist, she's invisible to others. And knowing a bit of magic ourselves, we can conjure up mist/fog whenever it suits us. I secretly call her Mithrandir, because I'm a Lord of the Rings fanatic and can't help myself, but I don't tell Jan that.

To cover hunting expenses, I do tarot readings at fairs and festivals and such. I'm really good at it, especially given my powers and the fact that I have a really powerful deck that reads energy well and feeds off my energies amazingly well, so I make a decent amount of money from it, though I can't say everyone likes what the cards have to say, no matter how true it may be. I also am naturally talented at singing, went to a school for middle and high school for it, and I'll occasionally enter talent contests in towns we pass through and if things aren't looking my way during the contest, I use my abilities to sway the judges and audience to my favor. It's a little like cheating, but it helps with the cash flow.

We were trained as hunters by a coven of local witches who specialize in tracking and slaughtering the evil that walks the earth. We "stumbled" upon them when I sought out a "medium" in my grief-stricken distress to attempt to speak to Gideon's departed spirit. She immediately sensed my powers and flipped the switch on me and started grilling me about my abilities. I guess she thought I was there to do harm to her and her coven in some way or had been sent by someone who wanted that. I was astonished, to say the least, and retaliated by reading her emotions back at her and taunting her. Probably not my best move, but I was pissed.

I had come to her for comfort, not an attack.

The verbal battle only abated when Gideon did make his presence known, which I knew I could sense the presence of things unseen and unliving but thought that I was blocked up for some reason and that's why I couldn't sense Gideon, and he spoke to the medium as his angelic self and told her who and what I was. I can't hear or see spirits yet, so I didn't know any of this until she told me to follow her, which I warily did, and she took me into a back room with a large symbol drawn on the floor and books lining the walls, along with weapons, and she sprinkled me with what I later found out was holy water and chanted spells while circling me and making me stand in the center of the symbol and asked me to step over a ring of salt she sprinkled on the floor and off the symbol on the floor and she touched silver to my flesh.

After that, she seemed satisfied and told me that my angel lover had told her I was a helper and could be of use to her and her coven, if they protected me and watched over me. I was stunned and asked if he had said anything else, and she said that he only said he loved me very much, and then he was gone. She was looking at me with pity mixed with a hint of sadness, which I can only assume was because I looked a hot mess due to my crying whenever in any kind of confrontation and I had been basically a gushing faucet during the verbal battle just waged.

I broke when I saw her look at me that way, and just collapsed onto the floor in the middle of the symbol, sobbing my heart and soul out. She rushed to my side and put her arms around me, much the way a comforting mother would, and rocked me gently back and forth. I spewed forth the whole story to her of what had happened with Gideon, with what he was and what I was and how I just wanted to find the bastard that had taken him from me and repay the favor in kind and I had been hoping Gideon could give me some clues as to who or what had done him in and also I just wanted to speak to him, to hear from him, again, to ease the hurt and grief and pain, so much pain it was consuming me.

Mya soothed me with words I couldn't understand and calmed my hysterics. She sat me up and turned me to face to her. "You are like the Phoenix. You will rise from the ashes of your sorrow and burn brighter than ever. I want you to listen to me carefully, now."

And there is was again: that word, phoenix. I couldn't shake why it seemed to be following me around.

And that's when she told me about her coven of hunter witches and what they did and that she sensed my powers and she could help guide me in growing them and she could train me to find and fight whatever killed my angel lover. But that it would be hard and she could foresee great hardship in my future if I walked this path alone. She told me to go home and think it over for a few days or so and come back to her when I was ready to learn.

I came back a week later, determination steeling my resolve to do this, and she accepted me and introduced me into her coven. My training began right away and I was taught about everything from ghouls to ghosts to werewolves to vampires to you name it. That's when my fighting training began and also my weapons training.

But I couldn't hide what I was doing from my sister, no matter how hard I tried. Jan is like a detective and knew something was up, and cornered me and got it out of me, and determined for herself that she was going to do this thing too, because there was no way in hell she was letting me do it alone. When I brought her with me to Mya, Mya didn't even flinch but put her through the same tests with the salt and the silver and the holy water and the symbol and began training her too as well. She reminded me that she had told me I couldn't walk this path alone, and now I had the companion I needed. She said blood and family were strong protections against evil.

We also learned magic and spells and things of that nature. We learned how to exorcise a demon from a vessel with what seemed a thousand incantations. We learned how to make different hex bags for different purposes. We learned how to lay traps using magic. Needless to say, we learned a lot.

I spoke of an anti-possession tattoo earlier. The witches told us we needed these to keep from being taken over by demons and used against our will, so Jan got an endless knot in the center of her shoulder blades (something about not wanting to piss our father off with a pentagram) and I got a pentagram surrounded by flames with angel wings on either side and the phrase "Fear No Evil" underneath on my right wrist in cursive script. The phrase was something Gideon used to say all the time. The flames are because the witches refer to me as the Phoenix (again, couldn't seem to escape that word), for some reason, and say it has important meaning and I'll understand later. Whatever, I just trust them. The pentagram was because I don't care about pissing my father off or not and was one of the symbols to ward off demons and a tribute to our witch friends who had taught us so much and done so much for us.

As for attire, I wear a tan fitted jacket over a cute shirt or tank-top with fitted jeans with a black double grommeted belt with silver grommets and buckle and Dr. Scholls Interest boots in black (I wear the bottoms of my jeans inside the boots). They're a little roughed up and loved on, but they're comfy and get the job done. Jan wear mostly black: black wife beater tank-tops, black fitted t-shirts, dark wash jeans, black leather motorcycle boots, black fitted leather jacket. She's stereotypical hunter.

The witches didn't just teach me to strengthen my powers and hone my skills as a hunter. They also taught my sister and I something else incredibly valuable. They taught us that not every "monster" we come up against should be killed or done away with. They taught us compassion and mercy and to use reason and logic and that if the creature isn't hurting humans, then to leave it be. I'm glad that's a lesson we didn't have to learn the hard way.

And that's my sister and I, the Stryke sister's, wanna-be hunters of the Southeast, about to set out on their journey for justice.

Now let's get to the good stuff, shall we?


End file.
